Dear Amy,

I know you can't actually read this, but I'm writing anyway because there's so much stuff I'm longing to say to you but can't. It's been what, nearly 3 weeks? That's a record in non-communication in the admittedly short time we've known one another, you went to Spain last year for about 10 days and I remember counting the days down. I'm missing you, hardly surprising really, all those silly little everyday communications, like how the heel flap on my Jitterbug socks has striped in this amazing way so that every second stripe is red. It looks like it's going to be enough for a complete pair of socks too, I know you were worried for your pink socks. So I could have given you the other skein I've got, did I ever say that to you? I was planning to, that if I hadn't touched it you could have it to make yourself some socks because you loved the colours so much. I remember you sitting in Nero mesmerised by the colours as I knitted.

It was funny but there came a point during your funeral, when the vicar talked about Lazarus rising again from the tomb, where I expected you to come back. For that instant it seemed the next logical thing, there you'd be, in your brown coat, smiling, saying that no, you were back and that the nightmare wasn't real. And we'd all celebrate and go to the pub and everything would be back to how it was. But then I realised it was all for real, that you were gone, that Lazarus rose again, but you weren't going to. The nightmare is reality, not a dream.

Overall I think you would have liked your funeral, it was a very warm occasion. Afraid I didn't sing much during the songs, too choked up, except during "Be thou my vision", that one always makes me feel encouraged and hopeful. You would have been proud of your dad and brothers, what they said was just right, and Jenny, so brave, managed to talk without crying. She was wearing a gorgeous dress, not a klingon outfit I'm afraid. For the record I never disliked your clunky shoes, they were part of you and I'm sure I won't stop looking for a new pair for you everytime I go near a shoe shop for quite a while to come.

I'm sorry we only had one of your birthdays but two of mine in the time I knew you, feels like I cheated, also emphasises how little time we knew one another, but I guess it's quality not quantity right? I had some yarn waiting for your birthday, from Fyberspates (in the sale I'm afraid, but I always feel that means I can give more for my money). It was a tough decision between the plums and red colourway and the pinks and purples colourway, I went for the latter in the end, because it had less blue in it. At least that's not a problem for you anymore? Now I think I'll make your mum something with it as a present, either the Forest Canopy Shawl (I'm making one and I think you were considering it at some point this year) or the Branching out scarf, I'll swatch and see which looks best in the yarn.

Actually that yarn was about the second or third thing I thought of in the first shocked moments after I spoke to your mum, silly really, but I don't suppose any of us are that rational at such a time. At first I couldn't believe it, it sounded like news from another world, but I had a strange sense that it was something I had already heard, in another time and place, all at the same time. Well you always knew I was odd! Then I thought about how when I died you'd be there to meet me and how much I was looking forward to seeing you again, I still am.

In the meantime I miss you, still not entirely convinced it's all sunk in, that you are truly gone and not coming back. Everyone keeps saying it will get better in time (heck I've said it to other people too... groan I do give crap counsel), but that doesn't really help now. I hope you're happy with Jesus, I can't see how you wouldn't be, and enjoying all those wonderful promises.

""Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." Revelation 21

"And I—in righteousness I will see your face;
when I awake, I will be satisfied with seeing your likeness." Psalm 17

They're more to remind me than you, because you can see His face now, must be amazing. Awful though my memory is I pray I never forget you and what you have taught me (and are still teaching me) about life and Jesus.

lots of love, your friend

Stephanie

Croydon Advertiser

The Croydon Advertiser had a piece about Amy

Hope?

Amy's funeral was today: both a wonderful and a terrible occasion. I cried buckets, wasn't meaning to fuss, just couldn't help myself. It's a terrible thing to see your best friend's coffin. On the whole I liked the send off for Amy, the speakers captured Amy. However, it wasn't a terribly hopeful occasion and really, for any of the Christians certainly, it should have been. Amy isn't gone forever, she's alive forever. She's not dead, she is asleep with Christ, Paul rates what has happened to Amy as far better than being 'alive', here on earth, though not as good as being alive at the second coming (2 Corinthians 5). We'll meet again, when Amy is well, when I am well and we'll see Jesus face to face and be home at last.

I'm trying to keep some hope, at least that one day I'll be home. Meanwhile I continue to walk "through the wilderness of this world" (Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan) and the grief is terrible, it comes in great engulfing waves, threatening to smash everything in its path. The wilderness looks a lot more wild without Amy, but Jesus is still here. Just got to go on trying to trust I suppose.

Someone today said that Amy's life really was "life to the full" like Jesus had promised, made me realise I hadn't understood what Jesus was on about. Living life to the full is evidently a hard road, what in this being a Christian lark isn't? How didn't I twig that one?

To be utterly open, on an online blog that no one reads (great place for me to choose? I'm no good at talking), I'm feeling fairly ready to give up now: so tired, so smashed to pieces, bashed about by life, worn and ground down. It feels like everyone expects me to keep plodding on and on but I just don't feel like I have it in me anymore. Sometimes being seen as 'strong' is a right nuisance, you never get a break. I've got distant hope, but how to hope now? How do I keep going from here?


footnote: have found John Piper's sermons on "What happens when we die" helpful http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Sermons/BySeries/74/ (though I admit I've only read the first couple)

Stephanie is...

like on facebook or twitter updates. I have had so many thoughts/feelings going through my head and just want to get them down onto 'paper'.

Stephanie is...
confused
muddled
anxious
pleased to have finished the first of the brightly coloured socks
feeling slightly sick
missing her friend
glad none of the plants have died yet (touch wood)
hoping she manages to do the finishing on her jumper nicely
feeling lonely
feeling a bit tight chested and wheezy
rather fed up
bored
loving Charlie and Lola
wondering how much longer things get worse and worse for...
trying not to feel sorry for herself
knitting madly to try to survive

Amy

The last couple of days have been fairly awful, perhaps among the most awful you ever get? I don't know, things tend only head from bad to worse in my life. The reverse switch must have got broken. My closest friend, Amy, died from heart failure, in her sleep. She was a year and a bit older than me or there abouts, I never was great at maths. She was a fellow occupant of the slow lane, in her case because she had a congenital heart problem, so she understood what life looks like from round here, probably better than I do.

On the one level I'm glad she's stopped having to struggle, I'm glad she'll never have to go into hospital again, glad she'll never have to have that pacemaker hanging over her. She's with Jesus in that fantastic resurrection body that is well and active and more alive than anything here. But back here there's a huge Amy shaped gulf opened up in my life and in the lives of everyone who knew her. Just writing that feels so selfish, but it's how I feel.

Writing this is I suppose a way of being able to get out how I'm feeling because I'm so awful at talking to people about how I am, not the "how are you?" thing, the how I really am, deep down. I can pretend to be fine, accomplished at it, seeming ok; but I'm so bad at talking, maybe I can write instead? Even if no one ever reads this except Jesus, I'll have said it. I can't seem to talk to people right now, in a situation like this Amy is the person I would have turned to. When I had a bit of a panic about her funeral I thought to myself, "it's ok, I'll ask Amy to go with me, she'll understand that it's a tough thing to go to, she won't mind and it'll be ok". Then I remembered with that peace-shattering lurch that I couldn't and why the funeral was happening in the first place.

It's all the most stupid stuff that comes to you. How you'd still got her 'Vicar of Dibley' dvd. How you'd already got her birthday present. How there were all these silly trivial little plans we'd made, like building studio flats in the sky, about how one day we'd go to her favourite Chinese and have their lunch deal, or have a special not-on-pancake-day pancake day because she'd been in hospital, or watch Mamma Mia together and laugh and maybe sing along and probably end up waking Holly the cat up by accident. I had my own private plans, I hadn't mentioned to Amy yet, like how I was going to take her out for lunch at 'Albert's Table' to say thank you for being such an amazing friend and where the carpark was from the restaurant and how far she'd need to walk and if it would be better if we just got the bus instead. And now it's not going to happen.

And she's not going to finish those jumpers she started, for some reason the red hoodie chokes me up especially because it was an act of perseverance knitting that, she knew the results would be so good to wear, so soft and warm, but that knitting it in that boucle yarn was horrible. And now there's still a sleeve and a half to go and no one to wear it. We're never going to go to Wesley Owen again and wander around for an unbelievable time and weigh up our different purchases, discuss the music playing and only leave when one of us could barely stand up anymore and we were starting seriously to worry about bankruptcy.

Amy's great legacy is friendship, she was a great, great friend. She took the body of Christ outside the stone walls of a church and made it a 24/7 thing, caring, listening, understanding in ways that no one else could. There's stuff I want to talk about that I just can't because she's not here. No one else would understand so completely and so fast. One thing that has struck me over the past forty-eight hours is how many people describe Amy as their 'best friend'. When I was little prevailing opinion seemed to be that you could only have one 'best friend' and that others came 'second' and 'third' and 'nowhere in particular'. But Amy had lots of 'best friends' and we were all number one. Amy's friendship was also reciprocal, it wasn't just one sided, Amy dispensing friendship, she also had the grace to allow the relationship to be mutual, she supported me and I supported her. That has to be the best form of friendship - like Jesus said:
"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." John 13.34-5

Amy's faith was great too, I was always urging her to read the Bible more, to pray more. Nothing wrong with that in general, but I think I was arrogant, I didn't give her enough credit for just how great her faith was, well, is. She believed in Jesus while she was here on earth despite all the odds, despite disability and illness and fear and stress and uncertainty and operations and frustrations and crushed dreams. That's faith, just still to be believing and trying to trust, despite everything. I can't remember if I ever said to her how great her faith was, how amazing it was that she still tried to trust Jesus through everything. I reckon He's so proud of her.

A week ago we had lunch, in some ways it was a fairly crap lunch, Wetherspoons was busy, service wasn't great and Amy's burger was burnt, but the company was what I was there for. I'm so glad of that conversation we had, I really hope God helps me to remember more of it. But it felt like a significant conversation, an affirming one. She stopped me feeling awful about myself, helped me to see things more clearly. We discussed the church, I admitted how I felt useless and like a deadweight. I reckon Jesus must have had that same ability when He walked the earth of making whoever He talked to feel special and valued. I think I said she had the gift of friendship, wish I'd said more now. I'm so glad God gave us that last Saturday meeting, it was an extra, we didn't usually do two meetings in a week.

For me right now the road ahead looks incredibly lonely, I'm missing my travelling companion already, all the silly every day bits of news I keep wanting to tell her, about new sock yarn or carrots growing, all the flotsam and jetsam of everyday life. I will admit I'm feeling desolate at times. But I want to keep Amy's gift of friendship going and spreading through the body of Christ and to those who need more love in their lives, whoever they may be. And I know when I arrive home she'll be there to greet me, I'm looking forward to it.

Basil

IMG_1817
Originally uploaded by foggyknitter

My basil is growing nicely, very pleased with it, feel like a proud mother hen. Also looking forward to having fresh basil to eat.

This list is an excellent exposition of what it is to be knitting obsessed. I do quite a bit of this.

However, I'm not worried by this, more pleased if truth be told.